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Category Archives: news

But even if Hyundai is eventually forced to pay the full amount of the damages, the punishment could be substantially reduced through a tax loophole that permits the company to save millions of dollars by deducting any court-ordered punitive damages as an ordinary business expense. The result, critics say, is that taxpayers are in effect subsidizing corporate misconduct.

What’s terrible about this isn’t that companies are allowed to claim the fines they pay for malfeasance are an ordinary business expense. What’s terrible is that it’s true.

Update: I misspoke, as a commenter points out. A “fine” — that is, a penalty you pay to the government — is not deductible. What may be deductible are punitive damages, paid to people you injured or whose river you despoiled. Prepare your return accordingly!

Here’s the plan that just got shelved. From now on, capital gains on contributions you stow in a 529 plan won’t be tax free anymore — they’ll just be tax-deferred, as with a retirement plan. In essence, it takes away a tax break whose benefit flows predominantly to high-income families (some 529 money is held by middle-income parents, but under Obama’s plan the $500 or so they’d lose on their 529 was more than offset by an AOTC expansion.)

OK, this Congress is as likely to roll back a tax break for high earners as they are to rename Reagan National Airport after Pete Seeger, so this isn’t actually happening, but I’m just saying, that’s the plan.

He went as far as saying that the proposal could be characterized as a broken promise. “People saved money in 529 plans because of the expectation that the favorable tax treatment would continue,” he said.

But why does the New York Times let Mark Kantrowitz say this when it’s plainly not true? I saved money in a 529 plan. And the favorable tax treatment for that money will continue. When I take it out, I won’t pay a dime on any capital gains.

For money I put in later, it’s another story. But so what? If something’s on sale today, nobody’s breaking a promise to me when it’s not on sale tomorrow. I guess it’s strictly true that the proposal “could be characterized as a broken promise.” But it would be better to say it “could be characterized as a broken promise by people who don’t mind characterizing things as different things.”

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Another Wisconsin election day! By the polls — and I trust the polls, absent any reason not to — incumbent governor Scott Walker is likely to squeeze by with a narrow win. If you don’t live in Wisconsin, how much should you care about this? A lot, says Slate’s Betsy Woodruff, who calls this race “The Most Important Race in America.”

Winning statewide as a conservative Republican in Wisconsin isn’t easy. Even though five of its eight congressmen are Republicans and the GOP controls its statehouse, Wisconsin is a very blue state. It’s historically been a union stronghold, and it hasn’t gone Republican in a presidential race since 1984. For progressives, the Republicans’ fragile hold on state government is an insult, an affront that should be corrected.

Wisconsin is not a very blue state. In those 30 years since 1984, a Republican has been governor for 19 of them. In both 2000 and 2004, the Democratic candidate won Wisconsin’s electoral vote by less than half a percentage point. In 2012, Obama won Wisconsin by 7 points, in a year he won nationally by 4 points. So Wisconsin, in Obama’s home turf of the Upper Midwest, was slightly bluer than the country that year.

But it’s not California or Maryland. It’s not even New Jersey. It’s a state that’s half Republican and half Democratic. (See also: “It’s a recall, not an omen.”) That’s why elections here are close. Despite what Woodruff writes, neither liberals nor conservatives think they have a right to own the state. Walker has the advantage of incumbency and he’s probably going to win. That’s important for his dreams of a Presidential run; but I don’t think it has much to say about national politics.

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All attention is focused on Mary Burke and Scott Walker, so I didn’t even realize there’s a state ballot proposition in next week’s election. And it’s not a trivial one, either.

Question 1: “Creation of a Transportation Fund. Shall section 9 (2) of article IV and section 11 of article VIII of the constitution be created to require that revenues generated by use of the state transportation system be deposited into a transportation fund administered by a department of transportation for the exclusive purpose of funding Wisconsin’s transportation systems and to prohibit any transfers or lapses from this fund?”

But I’m voting no. I don’t expect every dime of people’s property taxes to support upkeep of residential infrastructure. I don’t think the sales tax should be restricted to promoting Wisconsin retail. I think money is money and it’s the job of the legislature, not the constitution, to decide how money can best be raised and where in the state it’s most needed.

The amendment prevents gas taxes and vehicle registration fees from being used to fund schools and hospitals and police, but it doesn’t prevent other revenue sources from being raided to fund our highways and bridges. And that’s what’s actually happening right now; the current administration takes $133 million from the general fund to fund transportation in the current budget. I’m not sure why transportation, out of all state projects, ought to enjoy a special status: allowed to draw money from the general fund, but constitutionally prohibited from releasing any back.

The Yes on 1 FAQ points out that many states around the country have constitutional language enforcing segregation of the the transportation fund. I looked at a few of these, and it’s true! But those provisions are of a rather different nature. California’s constitutional provision requires that 25% of the money go to public transportation. In Minnesota, it’s 40%. Our referendum has no such restriction, requiring only that the money go to things funded by the DoT. The Yes on 1 FAQ points out, correctly, that “Wisconsin’s segregated transportation fund is the sole source of state funding for the entire transportation system – highways, air, rail, transit, harbors, bicycle and pedestrian facilities.” Pretty weak sauce — the fund will not be prohibited from funding other forms of transportation. Unless an enterprising governor splits off transit into a separate department, that is. (Ohio’s Constitution, by the way, already forbids gas taxes and license fees from aiding mass transit.)

The amendment establishes one class of spending and taxing as privileged above all the rest. It shouldn’t be part of our state constitution.

Why are some articles, like mine, much more emailed than tweeted, while others, like the one about refugees, much more tweeted than emailed, and others still, like Krugman’s, come out about even? Is it always the case that views track tweets, not emails? Not necessarily; an article about the commercial success and legal woes of conservative poo-stirrer Dinesh D’Souza is #3 most viewed, but only #13 in tweets (and #9 in emails.) Today’s Gaza story has lots of tweets and views but not so many emails, like the Honduras piece, so maybe this is a pattern for international news? Presumably people inside newspapers actually study stuff like this; is any of that research public? Now I’m curious.

About 30 percent of heart attacks, strokes and deaths from heart disease can be prevented in people at high risk if they switch to a Mediterranean diet rich in olive oil, nuts, beans, fish, fruits and vegetables, and even drink wine with meals, a large and rigorous new study has found….

Scientists randomly assigned 7,447 people in Spain who were overweight, were smokers, or had diabetes or other risk factors for heart disease to follow the Mediterranean diet or a low-fat one.

Low-fat diets have not been shown in any rigorous way to be helpful, and they are also very hard for patients to maintain — a reality borne out in the new study, said Dr. Steven E. Nissen, chairman of the department of cardiovascular medicine at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation.

Now, I am not a low-fat dude. Long ago I dated somebody who was into Dean Ornish and every time she “sauteed” onions in water a little piece of me died. I pour a lot of olive oil on things, because I like it (especially Frantoia, which the guys at the Italian grocery in the Trenton Farmer’s Market turned me on to when I lived in Princeton) and because mainstream nutritional wisdom has been promoting monounsaturated fats for a long time now. But I do think low-fat gets kind of a bad rap from the NYT piece. Even more so in some of the other coverage, like the LA Times, which headlines their story “Mediterranean diet, with olive oil and nuts, beats low-fat diet.” The Times, at least, points out far down in the piece that the “low-fat” group, while counseled to reduce fat, didn’t actually do so. To get numbers, you have to go to the supplemental material of the original paper. There, you find that the Mediterranean eaters were getting 41% of their calories from fat, while the “low-fat” arm got 37%. A low-fat diet is 22%. Random googling suggests that most vegans are getting 20%-30% of their calories from fat.

In other words, the study doesn’t really show that the Mediterranean diet is better for you than eating low-fat; it shows that hardly anybody is capable of eating low-fat, which is a different thing entirely.

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UW-LaCrosse started it, launching an online math course, “College Readiness.” with the help of a grant from the Gates Foundation. A lot of the energy around MOOCs has centered on advanced courses: machine learning, business analytics, and so on. The kind of thing that gets funders and nerds excited. But funders and nerds are already educated! If MOOCs are to provide the educational equity they promise, they’ve got to do it at the low end — giving kids access to a better math course than their understaffed, underresourced high school can provide. Is there a demand for basic, unflashy math instruction online? Seems like it: a thousand people have signed up, twice as many as UWLC expected, including an 83-year-old and an 11-year-old. Those are much smaller numbers than Coursera gets for its sexy machine learning course, but I’ll bet the gap in number of finishers will be much narrower; this course is an “I need to,” not an “It would be cool to.”

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You knew there was one, right? While the national party was crying in its beer, Wisconsin Republicans held the State Assembly and took back the State Senate, undoing the results of last year’s recalls and regaining complete control of the legislative process. After a December special election to fill the seat left open by Rich Zipperer (best political name of 2012?) the Republicans are expected to hold a Dale Schultz-proof 18-15 majority in the upper chamber.

That’s not such a surprise; a GOP-friendly redistricting generated a slight majority of Republican State Senate districts in this purple state. More impressive is that Republicans may not have lost any of the healthy majority they hold in the Assembly, an advantage obtained in 2010 when the GOP gained 15 seats out of 96 in play. That means there are a lot of new Assembly members who are well to the right of their districts. With the 2012 electorate back to a more normal partisan distribution, how did all these people keep their seats?

My guess is that people just don’t pay much attention to Assembly races, and that the incumbency advantage there is even bigger than it is for federal positions. After all, it’s reasonably safe to vote for the US Senate candidate nominated by your preferred party; that person’s been vetted at a high level and the chance that they’re an incompetent or a loon can reasonably be considered pretty small. But a State Assembly candidate? If the first time you see their name is on Election Day, it’s not totally nuts to go with the incumbent.

My guess is that the Assembly won’t switch control again, or even move close to 50-50, until there’s another Democratic wave election. Despite the many reasons Democrats have to be happy today, this election wasn’t it.

“if Walker actually wins by 7, it means there’s no massive shift to the GOP going on in this state, and you’re a broadly popular incumbent President whose hometown is within a half-day’s drive of most of Wisconsin’s population, your prospects here are pretty good…..

In 2010, Walker won as a non-incumbent in a regular election. If he gets the same margin against the same opponent, as a sitting governor, in a recall that not all Democrats think should have happened, I take that as a signal that the state of the electorate has shifted back to something like normal,, from the abnormally Democratic year of 2008 and the abnormally Republican year of 2010.”

In fact, Walker did win by 7. And I think my assessment of what that meant for the November electorate is looking pretty good!